What I was trying to ask was whether reporters should always rebut dubious facts in the body of the stories they are writing. I was hoping for diverse and even nuanced responses to what I think is a difficult question… I was also hoping to stimulate a discussion about the difficulty of selecting which ‘facts’ to rebut, facts being troublesome things that seem to shift depending on the beholder’s perspective.

Hmm… Okay. We think we can (again) answer Brisbane fairly quickly.

Nuanced answer: Yes. Facts are facts. They are not difficult things. For example, the capital of North Dakota is Bismarck. That is a fact. It doesn’t “shift” because the FishbowlNY editors have never been to Bismarck.